Digital Commons Network^™

Changes In The Timber Industry As A Catalyst For Linguistic Change, Joseph A. Stanley

Faculty Publications

Researchers have noticed the linguistic consequences of major social events in a community. Events that cause dramatic changes in demographics or sudden exposure to a new varieties such as World War II (Bailey et al. 1996), the rapid increase of island tourism (Wolfram, Hazen & Schilling-Estes 1999), or the start of daily trips to the mainland (Schilling 2017) often lead to the rapid spread of innovative linguistic variables and the recession of traditional features (cf. Herold 1990; Johnson 2010). The effects of these “catastrophic events” are typical of external factors in language change (Labov 2001). In this paper, I show …

Nominalized Adverbs In Spanish: The Intriguing Case Of Detrás Mío And Its Cohorts, David Eddington

Faculty Publications

Instances of adverbs modified by adjectives (e.g. detrás mío, delante tuyo) were extracted from the Corpus del Español. The corpus analysis reveals that these constructions are attested in all 21 Spanish-speaking countries to varying degrees, but are most frequent in Argentina and Uruguay. Adjectives following the adverbs in questions are predominantly masculine; however, in Peninsular varieties feminine forms are quite common. Although alrededor and lado are both adverbs as well as masculine nouns, they are occasionally followed by feminine adjectives (e.g. al lado suya), which is arguably due to the use of the feminine in other constructions such as encima …

Automated Large-Scale Phonetic Analysis: Dass, William A. Kretzschmar Jr., Joseph A. Stanley, Katherine Kuiper

Faculty Publications

DASS:

• 64 interviews available on a portable USB drive
• 370 hours of sound files--c. 200Gb, about 5000 files in all—plus metadata
• LICHEN user interface software

Why DASS?

• LAGS already widely used in analyses of Southern speech (e.g. Dorrill 2003, Feagin 2003, Schönweitz 2001, and Thomas 2005).
• Thomas (2001) has demonstrated successful acoustic analysis of our old recordings.
• The Atlas web site gets about a million accesses per year in recent years, so it is already a dataset that people want to use
• DASS makes a good sample across the South

Volcanic Vocalic Changes, Joseph A. Stanley

Faculty Publications

HYPOTHESES

pre-velars:

• Hypothesis 1: Longview is like the rest of Washington

back vowels:

• Hypothesis 2: /o/ is fronted
• Hypothesis 3: /o/ is monophthongized

Volcano:

• Hypothesis 4: These three changes have to do with a volcano

A Comparative Discourse Analysis Of Spanish Past Narrations From The Actfl Opi And Opic, Alan V. Brown, Troy L. Cox, Gregory L. Thompson

Faculty Publications

The ACTFL Oral Proficiency Interview (OPI) and accompanying proficiency guidelines have become a mainstay in academic foreign language assessment. In 2006, an asynchronous electronic interface of the OPI was made available in which candidates are asked to record themselves responding to questions delivered aurally via computer, labeled the Oral Proficiency Interview-computer (OPIc). Thompson, Cox, and Knapp (2016) found that both instruments produced similar results but that many students in their sample who scored at the Advanced Low level on the traditional OPI scored one sublevel higher on the OPIc. The primary objective of the present study is to analyze lexical …

Acoustic Classification Of Focus: On The Web And In The Lab, Jonathan Howell, Mats Rooth, Michael Wagner

Department of Linguistics Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

We present a new methodological approach which combines both naturally-occurring speech harvested on the web and speech data elicited in the laboratory. This proof-of-concept study examines the phenomenon of focus sensitivity in English, in which the interpretation of particular grammatical constructions (e.g., the comparative) is sensitive to the location of prosodic prominence. Machine learning algorithms (support vector machines and linear discriminant analysis) and human perception experiments are used to cross-validate the web-harvested and lab-elicited speech. Results con rm the theoretical predictions for location of prominence in comparative clauses and the advantages using both web-harvested and lab-elicited speech. The most robust …

Consonantal Variation In Utah English: What El[T]Se Is Happening[K]?, Joseph A. Stanley, Kyle Vanderniet

Faculty Publications

The purpose of this paper is to assess the frequency of consonantal variables characteristic of Utah English, and to shed light on several linguistic features yet to be analyzed in depth in this region. Because of its unique settlement history and predominantly Mormon population today, Utah is an outlier linguistically and culturally compared to other Western states. But research on Utah English has been focused primarily on vowel mergers (for example Di Paolo & Faber 1990; Baker & Bowie 2010), leaving variation in consonants relatively understudied.

The consonantal feature of contemporary Utah English that is probably most salient, both to …

English-Swahili Code Switching: An Intersection Between Stance And Identity, Gorrety Nafula Wawire

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The current study seeks to answer the questions of how and why bilinguals code switch as this are the essential questions that need to be addressed when looking at linguistic patterns of bilinguals. This study also incorporates stance, as a great tool for analysis of ways in which we can predict motivations for CS in bilinguals. In an endeavor to explain the language patterns in English-Swahili bilinguals in Memphis and Tallahassee Florida in the United States of America. The following study address how and why bilinguals code switch, and how different stance taking measures brings out the speaker identities. The …

Vowels Of Beryozovka Ewen: An Acoustic Phonetic Study, Kang Hijo, Yun Jiwon, Seongyeon Ko

Publications and Research

This study acoustically analyzes 13,540 vowel tokens of Beryozovka Ewen with the aid of automated post-transcriptional processing technique. The focus of the analysis is on the acoustic correlates of [RTR], which is the harmonic feature of the language. In addition to the first three formants, acoustic values representing spectral tilt such as H1−H2, H1−A2, and B1 are measured as potential acoustic cues of [RTR]. The results show that F1, F3, and B1 are the most reliable cues of the feature and that H1− H2 and H1−A2 are nearly reliable. These acoustic cues are also shown to interact with length and …

Harmonic Syntax Of The Twelve-Bar Blues Form: A Corpus Study, Jonah Katz

Faculty & Staff Scholarship

THIS PAPER DESCRIBES THE CONSTRUCTION AND analysis of a corpus of harmonic progressions from 12-bar blues forms included in the jazz repertoire collection The Real Book. A novel method of coding and analyzing such corpus data is developed, with a notion of ‘‘possible harmonic change’’ derived from the corpus and logit mixed-effects regression models that describe the difference between actually occurring harmonic events and possible but non-occurring ones in terms of various sets of theoretical constructs. Models using different sets of constructs are compared using the Bayesian Information Criterion, which assesses the accuracy and efficiency of each model. The principal …

Style And Flow: A Commentary On Duinker & Martin, Jonah Katz

Faculty & Staff Scholarship

Duinker and Martin’s excellent study presents a wealth of new data, findings, and analyses. It represents a welcome focus on the details of musical aspects of hip-hop, as well as an effort to combine those details with more global aspects of recordings in order to clarify what our notions of hip-hop ‘style’ or ‘sound’ are based on. The examination of instrumental backgrounds and production parameters is particularly novel. I would suggest, however, that the study could have benefitted from the use of details pertaining to flow, particularly in the examination of trends over time and stylistic sub-groupings. I show that …

U Wot M8?: American And British Attitudes Toward Regional British Accents, Alison Smith

Scripps Senior Theses

This research examines the relationship between British accents and their stereotypes. It looks specifically at the ratings of British and American subjects for a variety of British regional and standard accents, and examines them in contrast with observed stereotypes about these accents. The purpose of this paper is to compare the reactions of British and American participants in order to understand whether the stereotypes associated with these accents are purely socially constructed by British society, or whether qualities of each accent support these stereotypes. Results found a similar trend in the ratings of both American and British participants, though it …

Analyzing Songs Used For Lyric Analysis With Mental Health Consumers Using Linguistic Inquiry And Word Count (Liwc) Software, Ashley M. Miller

Theses and Dissertations--Music

Lyric analysis is one of the most commonly used music therapy interventions with the mental health population, yet there is a gap in the research literature regarding song selection. The primary purpose of this study was to determine distinguishing linguistic characteristics of song lyrics most commonly used for lyric analysis with mental health consumers, as measured by LIWC2015 software. A secondary purpose was to provide an updated song list resource for music therapists and music therapy students working with the mental health population. The researcher emailed a survey to 6,757 board-certified music therapists, 316 of whom completed the survey. Respondents …

A Preliminary Study Of Language Mixture Between Asturian And Spanish, Lucia Hermo Del Teso

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

This thesis presents a preliminary analysis of language mixture between Asturian and Spanish produced by Asturian speakers. Asturian is an endangered non- official language, closely related to Spanish, spoken in northwestern Spain. Asturian and Spanish have been in contact since the 14th century (Barnes, 2013). According to Thomason (2001), language contact can lead to different outcomes, like language mixture, language change, or language death. This study offers an investigation of forms in the Asturian language as a result of language contact between Asturian and Spanish. Data used is from an episode of a non-scripted TV show broadcasted in Asturian, which …

New Evidence For Early Modern Ottoman Arabic And Turkish Sign Systems, Kristina Richardson

Publications and Research

The earliest descriptions of Latin finger alphabets were recorded in southern Europe between 1579 and 1589. New literary and visual evidence for sixteenth-century Ottoman Arabic and Ottoman Turkish sign systems are presented and analyzed in this article.

Heritage Language Maintenance: A Mexican American Mother's Success With Raising Bilingual Children, Maria E. Estrada-Loehne

EWU Masters Thesis Collection

This is a single case study of an octogenarian Mexican-American single mother who raised her children bilingually in the United States, creating diglossia—with Spanish spoken at home and church and English spoken in school and community as recommended by Hakuta and others. Trained as a teacher in Mexico, this mother brought her children to full cultural literacy as well as bilingualism by practicing heritage traditions and speaking the heritage language exclusively with them. Through extensive interviewing this past year, I report on the themes in her stories, analyze the decisions she made, and discuss the success of her children. The …

In Search Of Cowboy B: Bilabial Implosives In American English, David Eddington, Michael Turner

Faculty Publications

This article presents acoustic evidence for the existence of a bilabial implosive, [∫], in one variety of U.S. English. One articulatory observation is that vocal chord vibration of the English bilabial stop, /b/, can only be maintained for a maximum of about 82 ms. Increasing the vibration beyond this threshold is only possible by increasing the size of the vocal cavity, which in turn is often enabled by lowering the glottis, a gesture characteristic of implosive stops. The authors compare the voiced bilabial stops of five white males from the Western United States, three of whom impressionistically appear to have …

Discovering Conversation Spaces In The Public Discourse Of Gender Violence: A Comparative Between Two Different Contexts, Meliza M. De La Paz, Ma. Regina Justina E. Estuar, John Noel C. Victorino

Department of Information Systems & Computer Science Faculty Publications

A huge factor in gender-based violence is perception and stigma, revealed by public discourse. Topic modelling is useful for discourse analysis and reveals prevalent topics and actors. This study aims to find and compare examples of collectivist and individualist conversation spaces of gendered violence by applying Principal Component Analysis, NGram analysis and word association in two gender violence cases which occured in the different contexts of the Philippines and the United States. The data from the Philippines consist of 2010-2011 articles on the 1991 Vizconde Massacre and the data from the United States consist of 2016-2017 articles from the 2015 …

Scalar Implicature In Chitonga-Speaking Children, Jodi Reich, Kelly Nedwick, Teodora Niculae-Caxi, Yang Liu, Elena L. Grigorenko

Communication Disorders Faculty Publications

Research on the acquisition of scalar implicature (SI) has provided evidence that young children interpret SI differently from adults. However, results have varied, and there is now mounting evidence that around six years of age, children are able to derive the pragmatic inferences associated with SI (Foppolo, Guasti, and Chierchia, 2012). Variability in results across studies could be due to factors such as data collection methods and language-specific differences. In order to add to the growing body of literature in a meaningful way, this research investigated the interpretation of sentences that include SI by Chitonga-speaking children (7-15 years old) in …

The Role Of Contextual Frequency In The Articulation Of Initial /F/ In Modern Spanish: The Same Effect As In The Reduction Of Latin /F/?, Earl K. Brown, Matthew C. Alba

Faculty Publications

The acoustic energy of 996 tokens of word-initial /f/ in the speech of 38 speakers of Mexican Spanish was analyzed. The results suggest that the frequency with which words occur in phonological contexts favorable to reduction (Frequency in a Reducing Context or FRC) conditions the reduction of /f/, even after taking into account the immediate phonological context. Despite this, it is also found that the conditioning effect of FRC is less robust than the influence of the immediate phonological context, thus confirming the preeminence in these data of the online articulatory factors in comparison to the usage-based frequency factors.

The Linguistic Effects Of A Changing Timber Industry: Language Change In Cowlitz County, Wa, Joseph A. Stanley

Faculty Publications

Hypothesis: Linguistic changes happened because of the changing timber industry.

Cowlitz County, Washington:

• Sparsely populated before 1920s
• Longview founded in 1923 by R. A. Long - two large lumber mills
• Population ≈ 35,000
• Right off I-5, two hours south of Seattle and one hour north of Portland

The West:

• cot-caught merger
• fronting of /u/
• lack of Southern, Midland, and Canadian features

Joselito And Calentito: Diminutive Enigmas, David Eddington

Faculty Publications

Two exceptional diminutives exist that have received little attention in the relevant literature. Joselito is unusual because it takes the suffix -lito, which may come from the /l/ in José Luís since the two are the most frequent collocates. The early appearance of Joselito, along with the fact that most of the other words that take -lito were later borrowings into Spanish, suggests that Joselito was the first diminutive of its kind. It then served as an analog for the diminutives of subsequent borrowings that ended in stressed vowels (e.g. cafelito, bebelito). The diminutive variant -tito (e.g. cafetito, sofatito) is …

อิทธิพลของเพศทางไวยากรณ์ต่อระบบปริชานของผู้พูดสองภาษารัสเซีย-อังกฤษเปรียบเทียบกับผู้พูดภาษารัสเซียและผู้พูดภาษาอังกฤษเพียงภาษาเดียว, กุสุมา ทองเนียม

Chulalongkorn University Theses and Dissertations (Chula ETD)

มีงานวิจัยจำนวนมากที่ศึกษาประเภททางไวยากรณ์เพื่อทดสอบสมมติฐานภาษาสัมพัทธ์ซึ่งกล่าวว่าผู้พูดภาษาที่มีประเภททางไวยากรณ์แตกต่างกันย่อมมีความคิดแตกต่างกันด้วย แต่งานด้านนี้ส่วนใหญ่มักทดสอบกับผู้พูดภาษาเดียว โดยมิได้คำนึงถึงผู้พูดสองภาษา เกี่ยวกับสมมติฐานภาษาสัมพัทธ์ ถึงแม้วอร์ฟมิได้กล่าวถึงผู้พูดสองภาษาโดยตรง แต่ก็พูดเป็นนัยไว้ว่าคนที่พูดได้หลายภาษามากเท่าใดก็จะมีความเป็นกลางในความคิดมากเท่านั้น ทำให้ผู้วิจัยสงสัยว่าประเภททางไวยากรณ์ที่อยู่ในตัวผู้พูดสองภาษามีอิทธิพลต่อความคิดของเขาอย่างไร นอกจากนี้ ผลงานในอดีตที่เกี่ยวกับเพศทางไวยากรณ์ในภาษารัสเซียแทบไม่มีเลย งานวิจัยนี้จึงมีวัตถุประสงค์เพื่อวิเคราะห์ความสัมพันธ์ของการมีและไม่มีเพศทางไวยากรณ์ของคำนามกับพฤติกรรมทางปริชานด้านการจำแนกประเภทของผู้พูดภาษารัสเซีย ผู้พูดภาษาอังกฤษ และผู้พูดสองภาษารัสเซีย-อังกฤษ และเปรียบเทียบพฤติกรรมทางปริชานด้านการจำแนกประเภทของผู้พูดทั้ง 3 กลุ่มเพื่อทดสอบสมมติฐานภาษาสัมพัทธ์ ผู้วิจัยมีสมมติฐานว่า ผู้พูดภาษารัสเซียซึ่งเป็นภาษาที่คำนามมีเพศทางไวยากรณ์มีพฤติกรรมทางปริชานด้านการจำแนกประเภทตามเกณฑ์เพศทางไวยากรณ์มากกว่าผู้พูดภาษาอังกฤษซึ่งเป็นภาษาที่คำนามไม่มีเพศทางไวยากรณ์ และผู้พูดสองภาษารัสเซีย-อังกฤษมีพฤติกรรมทางปริชานด้านการจำแนกประเภทตามเกณฑ์เพศทางไวยากรณ์น้อยกว่าผู้พูดภาษารัสเซียภาษาเดียวแต่มากกว่าผู้พูดภาษาอังกฤษภาษาเดียว ข้อมูลที่ใช้วิเคราะห์มาจากการทดสอบพฤติกรรมทางปริชานด้านการจำแนกประเภทสรรพสิ่ง โดยให้ผู้พูดภาษารัสเซีย 39 คน ผู้พูดภาษาอังกฤษ 30 คน และผู้พูดสองภาษารัสเซีย-อังกฤษ 54 คน ดูภาพสัตว์หรือสิ่งของชุดละ 3 ภาพและตัดสินว่าภาพใดไม่เข้าพวกกับภาพอื่นเพื่อที่จะทดสอบว่าผู้พูดแต่ละกลุ่มใช้เพศทางไวยากรณ์หรือลักษณะของสรรพสิ่งเป็นเกณฑ์ในการจำแนกประเภท ผลการทดลองพบว่าผู้พูดภาษารัสเซียจำแนกประเภทสรรพสิ่งตามเกณฑ์เพศทางไวยากรณ์มากกว่าผู้พูดภาษาอังกฤษ ซึ่งสนับสนุนสมมติฐานภาษาสัมพัทธ์ ส่วนผู้พูดสองภาษารัสเซีย-อังกฤษจำแนกประเภทสรรพสิ่งตามเกณฑ์เพศทางไวยากรณ์น้อยกว่าผู้พูดภาษารัสเซียภาษาเดียว แต่ไม่แตกต่างจากผู้พูดภาษาอังกฤษภาษาเดียวแสดงให้เห็นอิทธิพลของภาวะสองภาษา ซึ่งมีปัจจัยสำคัญคือความเชี่ยวชาญในภาษาที่สองในระดับสูง

Why Control Of Pro In Rationale Clauses Is Not A Relation Between Arguments, Alexander Williams, Jeffrey Jack Green

Faculty Publications

After (1) or (2) we can use (3), a rationale clause, to mean (4). We then mean that those who acquire a pitcher are the traders of the outfielders.

(1) The team traded away two outfielders

(2) Two outfielders were traded away

(3) PRO to acquire a pitcher.

(4) because then the trader might acquire a pitcher.

On grammatical accounts, this indicates a relation between two arguments that ensures their coreference, for any assignment of values to variables. PRO in (3), for example, would be related in this way to an argument that is linked to the role of …

Transcribing The Digital Archive Of Southern Speech: Methods And Preliminary Analysis, Rachel Miller Olsen, Michael L. Olsen, Joseph A. Stanley, Margaret E. L. Renwick

Faculty Publications

Large-scale transcribed audio corpora are available on Buckeye Corpus, Santa Barbara Corpus, etc.

How do these come to be? What’s the on-the-ground process of building such a corpus?

Here we discuss:

• Methods for large-scale transcription
• Early data & analysis resulting from transcription

Large-scale transcription:

• Time to transcribe. Estimated: 10:1; Reality:13:1

Phonetic Analysis:

• Comparison of formant measurements
• In-house Praat script no good
• DARLA filtered out 53%
• Too early to tell if FAVE modifications were better

Effects Of Second Language Learning On Mental Representations Of Time, Conner S. Clark

Honors Theses

The following thesis is a domain-centered study that examines the effects of second language (L2) learning on mental representations of time in native English learners of L2 Mandarin Chinese. The design of this study attempts to observe the effects of the existence and use of spatiotemporal metaphors in Mandarin Chinese on L2 learners of the language. The methodology used for data collection includes a three-dimensional pointing paradigm—a partially language-independent task—which attempts to isolate cognitive behavior. The task requires participants to answer questions (by pointing) regarding space and time on imaginary axes in front of their person using their own fist …

Early Foreign Language Education And The Effect On State-Mandated Standardized Testing Scores, Kaitlyn Elizabeth Duda

Honors Theses

Early foreign language education has been shown to have a positive effect on the performance of students on state-mandated standardized scores. This work gives an overview of the history of foreign language education, as well as a description of a specific program at an elementary school in North Texas. In order to analyze the effects of early foreign language immersion education on the performance of students enrolled in the program at Bedford Heights Elementary school, a statistical evaluation was performed using the STAAR scores of 3rd, 4th, and 5th grade students enrolled in both the foreign language immersion program and …

The Perception And Production Of Two Vowel Mergers In Cowlitz County, Washington, Joseph A. Stanley

Faculty Publications

Recent literature has revealed ongoing variation in Pacific Northwest English. In particular, back vowels (cf. Ward 2003; Becker et al. 2013; McLarty & Kendall 2014) and pre-velar front vowels (cf. Wassink et al. 2009; Riebold 2015; 2015, and others) have received considerable attention. In this paper I present recent data from Cowlitz County, Washington that shed light other mergers involving these vowels.

As explained in the Atlas of North American English (Labov, Ash & Boberg 2006), some form of the conditioned merger of /e, ɛ, æ/ before intervocalic /r/, sometimes known as the Mary-merrymarry merger, is found in most varieties …

/S/ Aspiration In Ciudad Juárez And Speech Accommodation, Sandra Esparza

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Phonological variation in Spanish mainly affects consonants rather than vowels. One of the consonants that is part of the variation is /s/ (Hualde, 2005). The phonological process that commonly affects /s/ is aspiration and is defined as the absence of the oral place features while a glottal friction is retained (Clements, 1985). Aspiration occurs in about half of the Spanish-speaking world (Terrell, 1981) and constitutes one of the most useful stylistic and sociolinguistic variables that characterizes Spanish social dialects and discourse models (Lipski, 1991). Aspiration is present in several Spanish dialects in Latin America (Resnick, 1975). In the specific case …

Adult L2 Processing And Acquisition Of The English Present Perfect, Christopher J. Farina

Theses and Dissertations

This research investigates the second language (L2) processing and acquisition of the English present perfect via two features: boundedness and current relevance. Boundedness indicates whether an action reaches an endpoint (Smith 1997; Verkuyl 1972); it divides the functions of the present perfect into sets that denote completed situations or ongoing/iterative ones (Bybee et al. 1994; Housen 2002). Current relevance indicates the present importance of a past situation (Siemund 2004); it differentiates the present perfect from the simple past (Bardovi-Harlig 2002). Previous research has relied on offline methods (that evaluate metalinguistic knowledge); no research in SLA has investigated the acquisition of …